Backstage: Drama. Starring Emmanuelle Seigner and Isild Le Besco. Directed by Emmanuelle Bercot. (Not rated. 115 minutes. In French with English subtitles. At the Lumiere.)

There's a lot to recommend about this dark, pleasingly unpleasant French film, but the most striking thing is the way it captures the atmosphere surrounding a major star. "Backstage" is being compared, mainly for publicity purposes, to "All About Eve," but the story is nothing like it, except in the broadest sense: A huge star takes in an adoring groupie and makes her part of her entourage.

In fact, compared with what we see in "Backstage," the characters surrounding Margo Channing were models of mental health, and though "All About Eve" has it all over "Backstage" in terms of literacy and colorful characters, "Backstage" is made by people who understand all the neuroses surrounding fame. It presents a world both ugly and emotionally addictive, and it gets it exactly right.

The thing about fame is that it's something that can't be felt, can't be measured and can't really offer solace, yet it's intensely coveted. Everyone who has it wants to keep it -- if anything, people usually want more of it. Stars love to be recognized, but only in the abstract. The actual dealing with fans is a nuisance, especially since it's difficult to tell who's sincere and who just wants to have a celebrity encounter. Stars love to bask in the knowledge that others, at that moment, are thinking about them or appreciating their work, but they can't see those people and can barely imagine them.

The entourage is drawn to fame and takes pride in being in its orbit. The star knows that it's the fame that draws them, and so -- as in "Backstage" -- the star resents it and, wanting to be noticed for herself, treats her employees with a mix of neediness and contempt. In the star's orbit, everything is about the fame. When a star is in the room, everyone in that room is convinced that that star is the only thing there that matters -- yet the star doesn't matter for anything happening in that room, but rather for something outside that room that can neither be quantified or adequately imagined. The entourage looks at the star as someone who is actually in hundreds of places at once, but whose main focus of energy just happens to be in the room, turned toward them. Thus, everyone, including the star, is a slave to the fame, lives it, loves it, tries to feel it, tries to rub up against it -- but can't.

That's the real predicament at the heart of "Backstage." Lucie (Isild Le Besco), a scruffy, unprepossessing teenager, adores Lauren (Emmanuelle Seigner), a huge pop star. Lucie gets to meet her idol on a reality TV show, but, instead of being thrilled, she has an emotional collapse. Later, when she recovers, she goes to Paris and seeks out Lauren, who's as big a child as she is. Soon, Lucie experiences the biggest joy she has ever known when Lauren instructs her to go out and score some drugs for her. With this, the fan becomes the star's slave.

In "All About Eve," the women were onto themselves. They knew who they were and what they wanted. "Backstage" is interesting for the opposite reason. The women dance around each other, share emotionally intense moments, but neither quite knows what she wants from the other. We know: They want love and glory. They want to feel the fame, but it's a pursuit with no possibility of consummation or satisfaction. Lauren is caught in that loop. Lucie still has a chance of escaping.

The women are superb. Le Besco ("À Tout de Suite") is a beautiful young actress, but she disguises that fact, turning Lucie into a borderline grotesque with an almost blank consciousness. Seig- ner presents a brilliant study of a woman whose self-definition has been so distorted by her focus on other people's reactions to her that she's become a hollow, neurotic shell, that most scary of creatures: the needy sadist.